How does WikiAves work?

The WikiAves was created to support the Brazilian online community of biologists and birdwatchers. By offering interactive tools the site allow its users to promote the search for knowledge, communication between the users, publication of data about the Brazilian birds with preservation emphasis and build the largest data bank of Brazilian birds in the Internet. Its function is to gather and organize the data provided by bird watchers and collaborators to transform it into useful and easy of access informations for beginners, amateurs and professionals. In order to be easy of access, the site was divided into two areas: the first is the Wiki pages where users can create and edit their pages contents. The second is the media area where the registered users can send photos and sounds. Once the media is added, it's evaluated by others users and the best rated medias are selected and showed in the wiki pages of species and other correspondent taxons.

The wiki pages of the WikiAves was created to transform data in information. Each species and taxon has its page with information obtained of registry and scientific of the “Birds of Brazil” list from CBRO (Brazilian Committee of Register Ornithological) such as: scientific name, name in Portuguese, name in English, status and scientific classification. The pages of how to edit documentations (in Portuguese) helps the user to create and edit the pages wiki.

The page Birds of Brazil is the portal of the wiki pages. By accessing that page, it's possible to navigate through taxons and species of birds of Brazil. The best rated photos of each order of the Aves class are exhibit on that page in their correspondent sections.

The pages of species are indentified by its species name in Portuguese and the pages of superior taxons by the name of taxons.

All of the pages have a predetermined topic to help the user in the changes of its contents. The topics can be excluded or altered and new ones can be included.

Special commands were created to exhibit the best photos of the species or taxons, and the map of its occurrence and the commands can not be removed of the wiki pages and will be monitored the WikiAves administrators.

The registered users may publish photos and sounds through respective menu items, this media are published instantly and are of the user responsibility in accordance with the Terms of Use of the WikiAves. The pages of how to send photos (in Portuguese) and how to send sounds (in Portuguese) help the user in how to proceed in the media publication.

The photos must be sent in JPG format and the photos that are larger than 1024 X 1024 will be automatically resized and saved in 4 sizes preselected: miniature square(100×100), miniature(180×180), normal ( until 640×640) and larger(until 1024×1024). The miniature square can be altered by the photo author through the photo editing of the pages.

The sounds must be sent in MP3 format and in the limited size 1MB (1 Megabyte).

The user that publishes media can collaborate with the WikiAves adding information related of the published media, such as:

• Bird species;
• Bird sex;
• Bird age;
• Photography date/recorded;
• Photography city/recorded;
• Photo Subject (What is the photo content?);
• Bird action/ (the photo shows the bird flying, eating…), etc.

Only the Date and the City of the photography/recorded are obligatory informations. Media without species’ information will be considerate Non-Indentified.

Medias without species identification are exhibit in the wiki section; however, they can be published for later identification. Other users can suggest the identification (specie, age and sex) for the media author through the commentary forms of the media. When identification is suggested to the author of the media, the author can click the link “Accept Suggestion” in the commentary to alter the identification of his media suggested. An e-mail message is sent to all users who commented a media once a new suggestion of identification is inserted in the media or a suggestion is accepted by the author.

All medias with identified species are considered occurrence of the bird, therefore must include the city and date of when the media was captured for future analyses of the species occurrence. Even after being identified, other observers can suggest the specie change through the commentary form of the media.

The registered users can include comments in the media pages. Through this resource its possible to suggest the inclusion or change of the specie, sex and age of the bird photographed/recorded. The users´ comments and every contents published by them are subjected to the WikiAves Terms of Use.

Registered users can evaluate medias in their photography quality and registry through the evaluation system in the media pages. To evaluate a media, the user has to click in one of the five stars in the media page. The vote can range from 1 to 5 from left to right. The users can not evaluate their own media. The evaluations will be used to qualify the photos in the ranking by the number of points.

The WikiAves map of occurrence show the registry of a bird specie in the Brazilian territory map divided by states. All the media with identified specie is considered one occurrence os the specie, and the geographical coordinates of the city where the occurrence was registered is automatically marked in the occurrences map. It is possible to consult the cities where the occurrence where registered by clicking on each state. That map is also exhibited in the wiki pages of the WikiAves species.